Author, Speaker and Software Engineer:
How Adrienne Tacke is Carving Her Own Unique Path in STEM
When Adrienne was a kid, she wanted to be a pastry chef. She began her college career as an international business major, with dreams of exploring the world and its cuisines, like the late Anthony Bourdain. It wasn’t until she needed to find a job to help pay for school that she was introduced to STEM. As a student technician in her school’s IT department, Adrienne discovered that she enjoyed problem-solving and helping people work through their technical challenges.
That part-time job led Adrienne to pursue a software development internship, which solidified her desire to grow in the tech industry. Later, while working as a developer at Healthcare Partners of Nevada, she developed an application called “Clinic Wait Time,” improving accessibility in Las Vegas medical clinics for the geriatric population they serve. Many patients complained about not being able to read the text on the screens in the waiting rooms, which Adrienne addressed by improving legibility, including estimated wait time, and adding doctor photos. Adrienne’s work was deployed to several clinics throughout Las Vegas, reaching hundreds of patients.
As a natural explorer at heart, Adrienne opened herself up to other ways of making her mark in STEM. Her desire to share her innate love and enthusiasm for software engineering eventually landed Adrienne on her first conference stage at the NEJS Conference in Nebraska. Sticking with her love for pastries, she creatively used dessert-based explanations to discuss the power of javascript.
Although she was very nervous, Adrienne thanked everyone in attendance for being a part of her very first talk.
“Everyone cheered for me and clapped. That changed everything for me because I didn’t think anyone cared. It went very well. It pushed me in the direction of quitting my job.”
Desiring more flexibility in her career and the chance to make a lasting impact that was uniquely her own, Adrienne left her role as a developer at DebtTrader to focus on speaking and creating educational and empowering STEM content. She wrote a children’s book called Coding for Kids: Python, focused on using games and activities to teach the essential elements of programming in Python.
Since taking the leap into a new career path, Adrienne was also invited to present at the WebCamp Conference in Zagreb, Croatia and the inaugural DevOps Space Conference in Gdansk, Poland on humane code reviews and Azure Automation. She also created a Linkedin Learning course on how to automate Azure development workflow.
Adrienne draws motivation from the young Filipino women that look up to her, and insists on being open about her failures and rejections. She doesn’t want people to assume that she has it all “together,” but rather hopes to serve as an authentic role model.
“I have to be a role model through the good and the bad. If anyone asks me questions I try to be as realistic as possible. I give them the pros and cons of every side.”
Adrienne emphasizes the importance of women authentically supporting other women.
“I really, really want other women to know that there is room for all of us, and we need to work with each other to get our seat at the table.”
Instead of giving up her dream of making pastries, Adrienne instead incorporates those technical baking concepts into the content she creates and still bakes in her downtime. Her unique path exemplifies the diversity of career options available to women with a passion for STEM.
This story was written by Stephanie Nweke, Wogrammer Journalism Fellow. Connect with her on LinkedIn.
